Developing Unconventionals East

Across the U.S., the shale rush has unleashed a frenzy of excitement about domestic energy supplies.

But the oil and gas produced from fracking comes along with billions of gallons of wastewater and tons of mud and rock that carry radioactive materials and heavy metals.

As problems with disposal mount, the industry has offered mostly vague promises of “recycling” to describe how the waste will be handled over the long run.

As the nation gears up to produce vast amounts of shale oil and gas — and the toxic waste that comes along with it — it’s worth taking a look back at the failures of another industry to handle its toxic waste responsibly — the coal industry.

Communities across America are still struggling to resolve problems left behind decades ago from coal mining and related industrial pollution.

These aren’t merely yesterday’s problems – the ash from burning coal at coal-fired power plants remains the single largest wastestream in the U.S.

When Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer stepped to the mic at a shale oil and gas conference earlier this month, he offered one of his most candid descriptions to date of how he sees his mission as a regulator. His job, he said, is to protect the state not from the potential misdeeds of drillers but from those of the EPA.

“EPA has completely lost its concept of the rule of law,” Mr. Krancer charged, adding that he would remain watchful against any effort by the federal government to usurp state authority over hydraulic fracturing.

It was a small window into the mind of the top environmental regulator in a state now famous as ground zero of the current drilling boom, where the shale industry has enjoyed a virtually unprecedented bonanza.

Mr. Krancer described how foolhardy he thought it was to assume that the industry needed policing.

“We’ve been doing this safely in the United States for years and years and years,” he said with regards to hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

Along these lines, he dared his listeners to walk up to any American rigworker and to look that worker in the eye and tell say to his or her face that they shouldn’t be trusted to do their job safely.

“Actually, I don’t recommend that you do take that challenge,” he added, to knowing chuckles from the audience of shale gas industry representatives.

When the shale gas industry met last week in Pittsburgh, none other than Karl Rove gave the keynote speech, regaling the audience with a lengthy patriotic anecdote comparing the fossil fuel dillers to the US Navy Seals who killed Osama Bin Laden.

Having recently attended a quail hunt fundraiser with some of those Navy Seals, Rove described the tenacity of one Seal who had been wounded sixteen times on a mission in Iraq but courageously improvised his own medical evacuation despite his severe injuries. Rove then told the assembled drillers that their industry was serving the nation and overcoming adversity in much the same way as that soldier.

“You overcome the physical difficulties of drilling thousands of feet under the surface for hydrocarbons,” he told over a thousand oil and gas executives as they dined on artichoke-crusted chicken. Invoking the wounded American soldier, Rove added: “He’s overcoming it by finding a way, after serving in this ghastly way like that, to serve something bigger than himself.”

It was quintessential Karl Rove. It was also the crowning moment of a rousing speech from a man who, over the past month has been pilloried for being so wrong, so often.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.